658 Migrant Children Confiscated by US In Just Two Weeks

Migrant children endangered in unstable countries seek asylum from the USA but under Trump policy are confiscated from migrant families by Homeland Security as a Trump-deterrence to future migrants. RINJ Photo

The significance of the 1475 ‘missing children’ report is that it refers to the US Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) (under U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) which finds homes for unaccompanied alien children.

With no other choice of where to send the confiscated children ordered by the White House, Homeland Security-confiscated migrant children are now sent to the ORR within 48 hours of capture says USA Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

A Department to which Trump’s new Migrant Child Confiscation policy assigns children is the one that can’t find 1475 children. ORR disposes of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC). Those migrant children today whose parents seek to protect them with asylum in the United States from dangers in their unstable home nations are ‘detained’ and deemed by Trump’s policy to be “unaccompanied”. Children can and do get lost in the system in the same way ORR can’t find 1472 kids.

Arrested and detained migrant parents fail to get their children back because ORR never did give children back, it only handled unaccompanied alien children (UAC).

Hence ORR has no infrastructured ability to track kids’ parents and where parents’ prosecutions and detentions are taking place–nor the disposition of court cases.

Parents arrested under the “zero tolerance” Trump plan almost always end up in jail for significant periods of time. If they plead guilty (most are bullied into doing that) they serve up to six months in jail or prison but if they fight their case they spend two years or more in prison. By this time, their confiscated children have been sucked up into a foster home regime. That’s the big problem. The methodology is intended to cause horrible suffering to families as a discouragement to anyone contemplating asylum in the US.

The [ACLU] report is based on over 30,000 pages of documents dated between 2009 and 2014. The documents were obtained by the ACLU Foundation of San Diego & Imperial Counties and the ACLU Foundation of Arizona through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit co-counseled with Cooley LLP. The documents feature numerous cases of shocking violence and abuse against migrant children, many of whom arrived in the United States fleeing violence in their home countries. ACLU

From 6 May to 19 May, 2018, 638 parents traveling with 658 children were prosecuted under Donald Trump / Jeff Sessions “zero tolerance” policy. Children were sent to ORR ‘Foster Homes‘ thus criminalizing migrant parents & forcibly confiscating the children whom their parents sought to protect from violence and sexual exploitation in their troubled homelands.